First, Chipworks released a dieshot of the new Apple A8 SoC (stored at archive.org). It is based on the 20nm fabrication process from TSMC, which they allegedly bought the entire capacity for. From there, a bit of a debate arose regarding what each group of transistors represented. All sources claim that it is based around a dual-core CPU, but the GPU is a bit polarizing.

Most sources, including Chipworks, Ars Technica, Anandtech, and so forth believe that it is a quad-core graphics processor from Imagination Technologies. Specifically, they expect that it is the GX6450 from the PowerVR Series 6XT. This is a narrow upgrade over the G6430 found in the Apple A7 processor, which is in line with the initial benchmarks that we saw (and not in line with the 50% GPU performance increase that Apple claims). For programmability, the GX6450 is equivalent to a DirectX 10-level feature set, unless it was extended by Apple, which I doubt.

DailyTech has their own theory, suggesting that it is a GX6650 that is horizontally-aligned. From my observation, their "Cluster 2" and "Cluster 5" do not look identical at all to the other four, so I doubt their claims. I expect that they heard Apple's 50% claims, expected six GPU cores as the rumors originally indicated, and saw cores that were not there.

Which brings us back to the question of, "So what is the 50% increase in performance that Apple claims?" Unless they had a significant increase in clock rate, I still wonder if Apple is claiming that their increase in graphics performance will come from the Metal API even though it is not exclusive to new hardware.

But from everything we saw so far, it is just a handful of percent better.

UPDATE: If you missed the live stream with myself and Jacob, you can catch the entire event in the video below. You won't want to miss out on seeing the first ever GTX 980 water block as well as announcements on new Torq mice!

EVGA has been a busy company recently. It has continued to innovate with new coolers for the recent GTX 980 and GTX 970 card releases, newer power supplies offer unique features and improved quality and power output, a new line of X99 chipset motherboards including a Micro ATX variant and hey, the company even released a line of high-performance mice this year! PC Perspective has covered basically all of these releases (and will continue to do so with pending GPU and MB reviews) but there is a lot that needs explaining.

To help out, an industry and community favorite will be stopping by from EVGA to the PC Perspective offices: Jacob Freeman. You might know him as @EVGA_JacobF on Twitter or have seen him on countless forums, but he will making an in-person appearance on Friday, September 26th on PC Perspective Live! We plan on discussing the brand new ACX 2.0 cooler on the Maxwell GPUs released last week, go over some of highlights of the new X99 motherboards and even touch on power supplies and the Torq mice line as well.

How can you participate and win these awesome pieces of hardware? Just be here at 3pm ET / 12pm PT on http://www.pcper.com/live and we'll be announcing winners as we go for those that tune in. It really couldn't be more simple!

If you have questions you want to ask Jacob about EVGA, or any of its line of products, please leave them in the comments section below and we'll start compiling a list to address on the live stream Friday. Who knows, we may even save some prizes for some of our favorite questions!

There is no truth [to that rumor of NVIDIA Adaptive Sync support] and we have made no official comments about Adaptive Sync. One thing I can say is that NVIDIA as a company is 100% dedicated to G-Sync. We are going to continue to invest in G-Sync and it is a way we can make the gaming experience better. We have no need for Adaptive Sync. We have no intention of [implementing it]."

To be clear, the Adaptive Sync part of DP 1.2a and 1.3+ are optional portions of the VESA spec that is not required for future graphics processors or even future display scalar chips. That means that upcoming graphics cards from NVIDIA could still be DisplayPort 1.3 compliant without implementing support for the Adaptive Sync feature. Based on the comments above, I fully expect that to be the case.

The ASUS ROG Swift PG278Q G-Sync monitor

With that new information, you can basically assume that the future of variable refresh monitors is going to be divided: one set for users of GeForce cards and one set for users with Radeon cards. (Where Intel falls into this is up in the air.) Clearly that isn't ideal for a completely open ecosystem but NVIDIA has made the point, over and over, that what they have developed with G-Sync is difficult and not at all as simple as could be solved with the blunt instrument that Adaptive Sync is. NVIDIA has a history of producing technologies and then keeping them in-house, focusing on development specifically for GeForce owners and fans. The dream of having a VRR monitor that will run on both vendors GPUs appears to be dead.

When asked about the possibility of seeing future monitors that can support both NVIDIA G-Sync technology as well as Adaptive Sync technology, Petersen stated that while not impossible, he "would not expect to see such a device."

The future of G-Sync is still in development. Petersen stated:

"Don't think that were done. G-Sync is not done. Think of G-Sync as the start of NVIDIA solving the problems for gamers that are related to displays...G-Sync is our first technology that makes games look better on displays. But you can start looking at displays and make a lot of things better."

Diagram showing how G-Sync affects monitor timings

So now we await for the first round of prototype FreeSync / Adaptive Sync monitors to hit our labs. AMD has put a lot of self-inflicted pressure on itself for this release by making claims, numerous times, that FreeSync will be just as good of an experience as G-Sync, and I am eager to see if they can meet that goal. Despite any ill feelings that some users might have about NVIDIA and some of its policies, it typically does a good job of maintaining a high quality user experience with these custom technologies. AMD will have to prove that what it has developed is on the same level. We should know more about that before we get too much further into fall.

Shinji Mikami has been developing a survival horror game, which makes sense given a good portion of his portfolio. He created Resident Evil and much of the following franchise. The Evil Within is about to release, having recently gone gold. At around this time, publishers begin to release system requirements and Bethesda does not disappoint in that regard.

Basically, Bethesda did not release minimum requirements. Instead, they said "This is what we recommend. It will run on less. Hope it does!" This would not be so problematic if one of their requirements wasn't a "GeForce GTX 670 with 4GBs of VRAM".

They also recommend a quad-core Core i7, 4GB of system memory, 50GB of hard drive space, and a 64-bit OS (Windows 7 or Windows 8.x).

Before I go on, I would like to mention that The Evil Within is built on the RAGE engine. Our site has dealt extensively with that technology when it first came out in 2011. While I did not have many showstopping performance problems with that game, personally, it did have a history with texture streaming. Keep that in mind as you continue to read.

A typical GTX 670 does not even have 4GBs of VRAM. In fact, the GTX 780 Ti does not even have 4GB of VRAM. Thankfully, both of the newly released Maxwell GPUs, the GTX 970 and the GTX 980, have at least 4GB of RAM. Basically, Bethesda is saying, "I really hope you bought the custom model from your AIB vendor". They literally say:

Note: We do not have a list of minimum requirements for the game. If you’re trying to play with a rig with settings below these requirements (you should plan to have 4 GBs of VRAM regardless), we cannot guarantee optimal performance.

Each time I read, "You should plan to have 4 GBs of VRAM regardless", it is more difficult for me to make an opinion about it. That is a lot of memory. Personally, I would wait for reviews and benchmarks, specifically for the PC, before purchasing the title. These recommended settings could be fairly loose, to suit the vision of the game developers, or the game could be a revival of RAGE, this time without the engine's original architect on staff.

With the release of the new Maxwell cards comes an opportunity for those with a smaller budget to still get a decent upgrade for their systems. Early adopters will often sell their previous GPUs once they've upgraded allowing you to get a better card than your budget would usually allow, though with a risk of ending up with a bum card. The ASUS ROG GTX 780 Ti MATRIX Platinum is a good example with a DirectCU II air cooler for general usage but the LN2 switch will also allow more extreme cooling methods for those looking for something a little more impressive. The factory overclock is not bad at 1006/1072MHz core and 7GHz effective memory but the overclock [H]ard|OCP managed at 1155/1220MHz and 7.05GHz pushes the performance above that of the R9 290X of the same family. If you can find this card used at a decent price it could give you more of an upgrade than you thought you could afford.

"In today's evaluation we are breaking down the ASUS ROG GTX 780 Ti MATRIX Platinum video card. We put this head-to-head with the ASUS ROG R9 290X MATRIX Platinum. Which provides a better gaming experience, best overclocking performance, and power and temperature? Which one provides the best value? "

UPDATE: If you missed the live stream yesterday, I have good news: the interview and all the information/demos provided are available to you on demand right here. Enjoy!

Last week NVIDIA launched GM204, otherwise known as Maxwell and now branded as the GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 970 graphics cards. You should, of course, have already read the PC Perspective review of these two GPUs, but undoubtedly there are going to be questions and thoughts circulating through the industry.

To help the community get a better grasp and to offer them an opportunity to ask some questions, NVIDIA's Tom Petersen is stopping by our offices on Thursday afternoon where he will run through some demonstrations and take questions from the live streaming audience.

NVIDIA Maxwell Live Stream

1pm PT / 4pm ET - September 25th

We also want your questions!! The easiest way to get them answered is to leave them for us here in the comments of this post. That will give us time to filter through the questions and get the answers you need from Tom. We'll take questions via the live chat and via Twitter (follow me @ryanshrout) during the event but often time there is a lot of noise to deal with.

So be sure to join us on Thursday afternoon!

UPDATE: We have confirmed at least a handful of prizes for those of you that tune into the live stream today. We'll giveaway an NVIDIA SHIELD as well as several of the brand new SLI LED bridges that were announced for sale this week!

If you were looking to download EVGA Precision X recently, you were likely disappointed. For a few months now, the software was unavailable because of a disagreement between the add-in board (AIB) partner and Guru3D (and the RivaTuner community). EVGA maintains that it was a completely original work, and references to RivaTuner are a documentation error. As a result, they pulled the tool just a few days after launching X 15.

This new version, besides probably cleaning up all of the existing issues mentioned above, adds support for the new GeForce GTX 900-series cards, a new interface, an "OSD" for inside applications, and Steam Achievements (??). You can get a permanent badge on your Steam account for breaking 1200 MHz on your GPU, taking a screenshot, or restoring settings to default. I expect that latter badge is one of shame, like the Purple Heart from Battlefield, that is not actually a bad thing and says nothing less of your overclocking skills by pressing it. Seriously, save yourself some headache and just press default if things just do not seem right.

PrecisionX 16 is free, available now, and doesn't require an EVGA card (just a site sign-up).

SLI Bridges are thrown in with compatible motherboards and there is usually little reason to want anything else. They work. There is no performance advantage for getting a "better" one, unless it does not connect with your specific arrangement of two-to-four cards. Today, NVIDIA gives another reason: a soft, beautiful glow to match the green "GeForce GTX" on the cards themselves.

Mind you, this is not the first glowing SLI Bridge. EVGA even provided us with a few of their own for a giveaway last year.

NVIDIA has three models, depending on the layout of your cards. 3-way SLI will need to be arranged as a series of two-wide with no gaps, using the "3-Way SLI Bridge". 2-way configurations have the choice of two empty slots between the two-wide cards, or no gap; former would purchase the "2-Way Spaced SLI Bridge" and the later, the "2-Way SLI Bridge". They each require GeForce GTX 770 cards, or better, as well as a recent GeForce Experience (1.7+). Certain non-reference designs may be incompatible.

The SLI Bridges are available now. Both 2-Way bridges are $29.99 and the 3-Way is $39.99.

Update: There is also the 344.16 for the GTX 970 and GTX 980, resolving an issue specific to them.

When they release a new graphics card, especially in a new architecture, NVIDIA will have software ready to support it. First and most obvious, Maxwell comes with the GeForce 344.11 drivers - which is the first to support only Fermi and later GPUs. Mostly, the driver's purpose is supporting the new graphics cards and optimizing to Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, The Evil Within, F1 2014, and Alien: Isolation. It also supports multi-monitor G-Sync, which was previously impossible, even with three single-DisplayPort Kepler cards.

At the same time, NVIDIA launched a new GeForce Experience with more exciting features. First, and I feel least expected, it allows the SHIELD Wireless Controller to be connected to a PC, but only wired with its provided USB cable. This also means that you cannot use the controller without a GeForce graphics card.

If you have a GeForce GTX 900-series add-in board, you will be able to use Dynamic Super Resolution (DSR) and record in 4K video with ShadowPlay. Performance when recording on a PC in SLI mode has been improved also, apparently even for Kepler-based cards.

Microsoft and NVIDIA has decided to release some information about DirectX 12 (and DirectX 11.3) alongside the launch of the Maxwell-based GeForce GTX 980 and GeForce GTX 970 graphics cards. Mostly, they announced that Microsoft teamed up with Epic Games to bring DirectX 12 to Unreal Engine 4. They currently have two demos, Elemental and Infiltrator, that are up and running with DirectX 12.

Moreover, they have provided a form for developers who are interested in "early access" to apply for it. They continually discuss it in terms of Unreal Engine 4, but they do not explicitly say that other developers cannot apply. UE4 subscribers will get access to the Elemental demo in DX12, but it does not look like Infiltrator will be available.